We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life, and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered. (Introit, cf. Gal. 6:14)
So begins the Mass for this Wednesday’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Easy to overlook as the train of our lives gains speed into fulltime fall frenzy, this ancient observance is not a rumination on the life-and-death cycle that prompts poets to muse on the beauty of autumnal colors, but rather a straightforward celebration of the redeeming value Christ’s brutal suffering and death. It marks the anniversary of the discovery of the True Cross on September 14, 320 A.D. by Saint Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, at Jerusalem, where she had traveled specifically to search for it. Because she knew: of course they kept it, with the same human impulse that leads us to keep bits and pieces of all sorts of things that figured into major moments of our lives. A bite of 14-year-old wedding cake, anyone? You may be able to fit into your wedding dress, but I routinely wear the alb in which I was ordained a deacon back in 1996 A.D..
…So must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. (Jn 3:15) So this thing that lifted up the Son of Man unto His death, thereby figured into the salvation of the world; this instrument of execution that became the instrument of salvation is itself lifted up, that is, exalted for us to venerate. Hence this great feast: For God so loved the world.
When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself, says the Lord. (Communio, Jn 12;32) O Come, let us adore Him! Never is the love of God more perfectly manifest than in His saving sacrifice, exalted on the Holy Cross.
At the heart of the Mass for the Feast is the Preface, which includes this beautifully poetic, almost arithmetic, tracing of the trajectory of mercy from the Fall of Man to the great Lifting Up:
For you placed the salvation of the human race
on the wood of the cross,
so that where death arose, life might again spring forth;
and the evil one, who conquered on a tree,
might likewise on a tree be conquered, through Christ our Lord.
For those of us who lazily lapse into the irritable expectation that suffering is a sign of God’s negligence, or even his disfavor, this day is a reminder and corrective. This is my beloved Son, the Father assures us more than once. The one whom the tempter accused of being protected by the angels of God “lest you dash your foot against a stone” is Himself dashed to death against our sin. God Who embraced our human nature and condition first in the helplessness of human infancy joins us in our helpless subjection to death. The difference is that you and I deserve it, as the thief agonizingly observes. So when pain and even death afflict us, God is not withdrawn from us, but rather He is waiting already for us to join Him there.
The Liturgy pours out on us unmerited but much-needed riches and wisdom, for the day after we dare to exalt the Holy Cross, we mark, on the Octave Day of her nativity, the sweet privilege afforded the Blessed Virgin Mary, our race’s solitary boast:
At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last! (Sequence for Our Lady of Sorrows)
So if, as the days grow shorter and your to-do list gets longer, you find yourself wondering Lord, why do you let this happen to me?, come to the fountain of consolation that is the holy Mass. Then, whether you find yourself stuck in traffic or on a gurney in pre-op, Rejoice when you share in the sufferings of Christ, that you may also rejoice exultantly when his glory is revealed. (Communio, Our Lady of Sorrows)
Monsignor Smith
